Last night’s episode of ‘Person of Interest’ involved a person of interest named Thomas Koroa who is a wine dealer by day and leader of a gang of thieves, The Hole in the Wall Gang, by night. Shaw and the team must determine whether Thomas is the perpetrator or the victim by infiltrating the gang and protecting or stopping Thomas from the inside.
This episode started out with Shaw working her day job which was as the wheelman for Romeo’s group. It turns out Romeo is sloppy and doesn’t stick to the timelines that Shaw lays out which puts her in danger during their heists. She quits Romeo’s gang stating that she had told him the first time he wasn’t on time would be when her agreement with him to be their wheelman ended.
Obviously her rigid adherence to a timeline serves a dual purpose: to protect her cover and also keep her and her team out of jail. I imagine though protecting her cover is her number one priority and she can’t risk Romeo jeopardizing that with his cocky attitude. What was very interesting about the break up is that Shaw took what was stolen and threw it into the river. Had she been doing this with all their profits or was it just this one? And if it was just this one, why the sudden gleam of morality and right verses wrong? Shouldn’t she have taken her cut of the profit and been off? Or was it that she just didn’t want to be connected to a heist that in her opinion had gone so wrong?
This end of working with Romeo conveniently leaves Shaw open to new opportunities that present themselves to her though, which will be convenient in this episode.
Shaw meets up with Reese to continue surveillance on their newest person of interest, Thomas Koroa. She is immediately smitten with Thomas, even before finding out he is the ring leader for a worldwide gang of thieves which makes me wonder why, in all these episodes, would she suddenly be smitten with one of them. Not even in ‘Most Likely To’ during Season 3 was Shaw smitten with the person of interest in that one, and frankly that guy was a lot better looking than Thomas and had a more interesting background than Thomas the wine dealer.
But of course we discover that Thomas is not just a wine dealer. He runs a gang of thieves that has hit locations all over the world. Shaw is impressed with his dash and grab skills and how good this makes him.
This brings up a question for me, is doing crime, in particular burglary, what makes Shaw happy at the moment? The writers have presented Shaw as a unpredictable character, possibly a psychopath, which means the only thing that keeps her where she is, is her enjoyment of what she’s doing and belief that it benefits her. She doesn’t seem to care what is right or wrong, although she’s been learning that from John and Harold. But Shaw has no real moral compass, only a want to do what she enjoys. Perhaps the Machine recognized this, and it had to allow her to have a cover that didn’t bore her, it had to stimulate her or she would leave. All I know is that even though the Machine decided this was a good cover for her, Harold still doesn’t like the illegal activity aspect of it.
In order to protect Thomas, it’s decided that Shaw must become a member of his gang. John plants some drugs on the gang’s only female, Katya, and Fusco comes in and arrests her. Now there is a need for a woman on the team and Shaw swoops in to fill it, after a scene with far too much swooning by Shaw. She’s quickly accepted into the team, which isn’t a surprise at all, apparently her good looks and charms will turn any man. Of course come to find out, two of her new team were thinking she’d be dead by the end of the heist anyhow so what did it matter?
They pull off the big heist and find out that it’s not jewels they are stealing but rather MAR V or Viral Hemorrhagic Fever, a serious contagious virus that could be used to harm many if released into the populace. Shaw and Thomas manage to escape after Max and Henrik turn on them and try to kill them. It’s at the safe house that we find that Thomas has “rules” and would never participate in something like stealing a virus because the consequences are too large. A thief with morals, it’s really odd.
What struck me about this course of events was the potential for mass casualties due to the virus and how the number that came up couldn’t possibly be an irrelevant number. This proved true when it was revealed that Marko, a previous member of the gang who had supposedly died, shows up revealing he’s behind all of this. But along with Marko it’s revealed that the Relevant side of the coin, Grice and Brooks, have arrived to stop this new terrorist threat.
Shaw and Thomas work together to break into the vault and take the virus back to destroy it. Luckily with the help of John and Fusco they are able to escape with the virus but not before Shaw is revealed to Grice. This reveal though is possibly the end of Shaw’s cover, although one can hope that Samaritan will take her for what she is as her cover, a criminal.
I’m of the belief that Samaritan had use for this virus. Not exactly sure what it could have used it for, but I think this was all part of Samaritan’s plan, because almost everything is these days.
During this episode we also meet Jared Willkins. He’s started up a charity, OTPS that in the beginning Harold thinks is a fraudulent charity that Samaritan is using for bad things. With the help of Root who is on her sixth identity in two weeks, a nanny, they work to figure out what Samaritan’s use of Jared is. Come to find out the charity is a legit charity, One Tablet Per Student, which will provide a tablet to every student in New York. This puts Harold into a moral quandary because he knows in order to stop Samaritan who will use the tablets for mass surveillance that he has to destroy Jared’s good work to prevent it. This doesn’t make Harold happy. Root tries to make Harold understand why it has to be done, and I think Harold understands why it has to be done, he just wishes it didn’t have to be done at all. Good people, doing good works are unknowingly getting caught up in their war.
Side commentary on the new Relevant agents, they’re very poorly trained. They didn’t notice Shaw when they were tailing Marko, nor did they notice when Shaw and Thomas went into the vault to steal the virus’s back, or that Marko had shown up. I do find Grice’s moral dilemma weird as well. I’d think the government would hire people who don’t question things, instead of people who do. I don’t know if this is an introduction of a new character, but I sure hope not. Either way, he’s now on Samaritan’s radar due to allowing Shaw to leave. I doubt he’ll be alive much longer.
I can’t say I really enjoyed this show. It was good, but certainly not awesome. The banter between Root and Shaw, Reese and Shaw is great and I enjoy that immensely. I also like Harold’s involvement in taking down Jared’s printers, but the rest of the episode was a bit slow and lacking in my opinion. It wasn’t until the end where any good badass gunfight and butt kicking happened. The show needed a little more of that to make it flow a bit better, in my opinion.
I know not every episode will be up to my liking but this episode just seemed to be very slow. I imagine in the end though all this will be as important to the overall story. Perhaps this episode is just simply background setting up for some great upcoming episodes.
I wish I could love every episode, but we all know that that’s impossible. Even ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ has bad episodes that we all love to hate. But the series was the best ‘Star Trek’ ever to be on TV.
I was wrong about one thing. I assumed that next week’s episode would have fans angry but I see it’s going to be this week’s. John’s screen time was next to none, and that frankly that will find a lot of fans not so happy. The writers probably make up for it in next week’s episode though. But I can just see the tweets now about how this episode revolved around Shaw too much.
